


Fake It And Make It

by lightningrani



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningrani/pseuds/lightningrani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't take a genius to realize that people who are different aren't treated that great by others. And all little Lydia wanted to be was normal. </p>
<p>Or: one interpretation on how Lydia became the person she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fake It And Make It

When she was three, her mother found her teaching herself division with Barbie accessories.

Her mother and father looked at her worriedly but never thought it was anything special. Children play with toys in all different ways, after all, and Lydia just liked to sort things.  At least that was what they told themselves.

**

The first time Lydia realized that she was different was in kindergarten. She never had much patience when adults lied to her, and her teacher was not ready for an angry five year old asking her questions about negative numbers work.

Her parents did not like the fact that they were called into a parent-teacher conference three days after school started.

And they were definitely not happy that Lydia, as they put it, ‘was being a brat and wasn’t apologizing’. She was in the right! But every time she tried to tell them why she complained, they never listened to her.

They even sent to her a counselor, but as far as Lydia could tell, her job was to get Lydia to agree with her parents.  She left those meetings either in a huff or with the counselor pleading for her parents to come pick her up.

It takes even a genius some time to realize the stupidity of other people, especially at a young age.

Only when she her nanny dragged her to library to ‘keep her entertained’ (or, rather, meet up with her boyfriend during work hours) was she able to figure out the answer. Lydia innocently wandered into the picture books and waited for her nanny to get distracted.

After watching her nanny make eyes at her boyfriend for a few minutes, Lydia jolted into the section more suited for her needs: the chapter books. And not just the ones written for people with limited vocabulary. Books with two hundred pages, vocabularies which made her even stretch for a dictionary.

(She taught herself to read, but really, there’s only so much a five year old can learn on her free time)

During the few hours she had to herself (the nanny really missed her boyfriend) Lydia surrounded herself with books. The librarians didn’t bother her; they liked seeing children read, and they knew sometimes what seemed too advanced for one child was not hard enough for another was.

The nanny didn’t have the same belief as the librarian. She wouldn’t let Lydia bring back anything ‘too hard’, which meant nothing longer than a thin, easy chapter book. Her parents weren’t any better; they thought someone taught her how the read.

It was there that she found her first book about people smarter than those around them. She frowned as she read on. It didn’t take her too long to realize that she wasn’t just smart. She was a genius. But her future seemed bleak, at least according to these books.

Why was their life so hard? Why couldn’t people just accept that some people were going to be smarter than others? Why were all the smart people hated like that?

She wanted to live a normal life. And she knew that wouldn’t happen if anyone figured out how smart she was.

Lydia needed a plan.

**

Her mother smiled when she came home back from the library, with nanny –and parent—approved books in her hand. “Did you have a fun time at the library, Lydia sweetie?” she asked. Lydia nodded like the good girl she was supposed to be.  “Now, what are you reading?”

Lydia wanted to be normal. To be normal, that meant she had to be like every other girl in her class. Which, instead of reading something interesting like A Wrinkle in Time, meant reading books about little girls in kindergarten.

“I don’t know. Maybe this one?” Lydia held out a book with a girl in pink frills and ribbons on the cover.

“Oh wow, that looks really interesting. What do you think of the girl?”

Lydia thought that the girl was selfish and entitled and really, should not have been obsessed over that cupcake in the first place. But that wasn’t the answer her mother was expecting.

“She’s really cool! I want to be like her.”

“Aww, isn’t that sweet. Are you sure that you don’t need any help reading that? It could be a bit hard.”

There was a line Lydia was not going to cross, and faking her reading ability was one of them.

“No, Mommy, I think I got it.”

“Aww, aren’t you smart, Lydia dear?”

If only her parents had any idea.

**

One of the things she learned easily enough was that people don’t take a girl in pink seriously. (When she got older, she would learn why, but at the age of six, she was more angry than thoughtful).  It would explain why her parents never believed her; she was still being dressed by her mother, and she thought a little girl should be fluffy and cute.

When she figured that out, well, she tried to fight back again. Her mother was concerned, again. They sent her to a counselor, again.

It seemed like Lydia could never win. Her parents didn’t take her seriously, and anything she said which they didn’t think was normal was thrown back at her.

So she stopped fighting and gave in.  It wasn’t that she didn’t mind the frills and lace; it made her feel pretty and nice and she liked them.

It was always annoying to be belittled, but she never realized how she could use it until she slipped for the first time. Math was her weak point, she knew it, and when people oversimplified it, it made her a bit angry.

It was when her first grade teacher was talking about subtraction and kept on emphasizing how things could not go below zero, that you could not subtract bigger numbers from smaller numbers. Lydia tried to ignore that because negative numbers wasn’t something to fight over, at least not now.

Then one of her classmates, a spastic brown haired boy called Stiles (his real name unpronounceable to everyone except his mother) raised his hand and yelled, without even waiting for their teacher to call on him, if there could be such thing as partial numbers.

Their teacher laughed. “Oh, of course not, Stiles. How could that work?”

Lydia snapped. “Because there isn’t anything like fractions or decimals or even pi exists.” Everyone turned to look at her. Stiles flailed and almost fell head first to the floor again. The teacher raised an eyebrow at her.

“Why Lydia, I didn’t know you liked math!”

She froze and then gave a large smile. “My uncle likes to talk about it,” she replied sweetly.

“Well, isn’t that sweet. You don’t need to worry about those things until you get older, anyway.” Then the teacher went on like anything happened.

Lydia waited for the hammer to fall. Her parents would hear about what happened in class and then they would send her back to that stupid counselor and everything would be wrong.

But nothing happened.

The teacher didn’t think it was weird. The teacher thought it was cute. Stiles might have stared at her for a bit, but Stiles liked to stare (and flail) at people. She just usually ignored him. Everyone else typically did too.

The point was, lace, frill, and a large smile was enough for others enough to ignore what she said and instead focus on what she said. And she could use that to her advantage.

**

It got easier and easier as time went by. The more people thought of her as a pretty little girl whose brain was full of fluff just because of how she dressed, the easier it was for them to ignore her random outbursts of intelligence which happened from time to time.

Not being challenged in school left her bored, though. There was only so much she could study on her own free time, especially since if she studied too much, her parents would be worried. She spent her free time working the social system. Now that was something which was a challenge. Still, it didn’t take her too long to rise to the top. With her clothes and her wit, she fit the titular ‘queen bee’ spot very well.

Soon enough, everyone saw her as the stereotypical queen bee girly girl. And her cover was complete.

**

Yet calling it a cover was a bit of an oversimplification.

She may not have been on top of the social pyramid if she went down another route. She may not have picked clothing which was a bit impractical because of the name on the tag—or, well, picked fewer of them, since everyone needs a few pieces of impractical clothing in their closet at a time.

And she definitely would not have been as much as a doormat to some people so that it seemed like she was like every other girl.

But she still would be Lydia. Her cover wasn’t a shroud, hiding everything about her, but rather a small mask, hiding the small part of her others didn’t need to know about.

It was something she held onto whenever she saw the looks on people’s face, when they just saw the surface of who she was.

_If they couldn’t like her as she was now, then they couldn’t handle the real her in the first place._

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat inspired by The Report Card by Andrew Clements. If you haven't read it, it's a story about how a girl pretended to be normal by getting bad grades. Obviously, Lydia didn't go down that path, but the idea of hiding yourself behind something different was definitely based off that idea.


End file.
